Yeah, but in the past, boys like to play with girls -- not that this would be acceptable behavior.But thanks to BOB, boys who like to play with boys are finding it exceptionally easy with the close living arrangements and communal showers.

It's the MREs I tell ya. They should go back to putting saltpeter in them.

That is a joke and this is horrific. And the VA has always been a farking travesesty. My dad's in one now. He needed cardiac bypass surgery, and the closest one that could do it is 6 hours away, out of state. (But he is recovering nicely after a dicey first day. Should be home this week)

As the article notes that many of the reports relate to incidents that occurred prior to the repeal of the policy, such blame would be entirely baseless and irrational and would be demonstrative of a lack of understanding of temporal causality.

Don't you have to pass psych screening to get into the military? Is there any kind of effective screening assessment for sexual predation? What sort of results with the current screening would cause someone not to be able to join?

Don't you have to pass psych screening to get into the military? Is there any kind of effective screening assessment for sexual predation? What sort of results with the current screening would cause someone not to be able to join?

Don't you have to pass psych screening to get into the military? Is there any kind of effective screening assessment for sexual predation? What sort of results with the current screening would cause someone not to be able to join?

If I remember correctly, I don't remember any psych screening prior to joining, there is physical screening, and general questions like felony convictions, drug use, serve for a foreign military, etc. (Force or voluntary) Psych screening will come later if you exhibit weird signs.

/Although, I do see a psychologist and psychiatrist now for problems during active duty. Other airmen farked up my head.//Can't even get a job anymore because I can't trust anyone.

Arthen:You are aware that there are many more men than women in the military, right?

You are aware that there's a persistent belief that males don't make up significant amounts of victims of this type of crime / problem, right?

And that this belief contributes towards males not reporting and thus allowing offenders to continue offending, right?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the numbers perspective of this. But it's important to draw attention to things like this when they're available so that males might be more willing to report.

Hundreds of thousands of men, primarily aged 18-23, all living in close proximity, in a high stress environment. I would wager most of these had nothing to do with the perpetrators sexual identity and would suggest almost all of them self-identify as hetero.

Sexual assault among men tends to be more about power and dominance and less about sexual gratification, though I'm certain it was a contributing factor.

If I had to make some hypotheses, most of these cases involved hetero men on hetero men. In some cases probably multiple men on one victim. A statistically small number of cases will be homo male on hetero/homo male.

Male on female sexual assault is usually a combination of power and sexual gratification, so most of the perpetrators would be hetero men, though there may be a small number of homo men involved in an attempt to prove their 'heteroness.'

I don't know enough about female on male assault to make any speculations.

Maybe straight men shouldn't be allowed in the military, just women and gay guys.

abhorrent1:Chiquidin: I'm sorry "wrapped up like a Mexican taco", is there anywhere else that a taco is not originally from Mexico?

Just seemed gloriously redundant.

Are tacos even from Mexico at all? Do they actually make tacos in Mexico or it was another American invention.

As far as I know they were originally more like a tostada, flat cornmeal shell to put everything on, until someone decided to fold it. Taco is a spanish word, but it is used to depict the portion of a molly screw that is the anchor in the wall. Or it is slang for "bad words", as far as the food it was original in Mexico. Burrito, fajita and all this good food items.

PainfulItching:It's the MREs I tell ya. They should go back to putting saltpeter in them.

That is a joke and this is horrific. And the VA has always been a farking travesesty. My dad's in one now. He needed cardiac bypass surgery, and the closest one that could do it is 6 hours away, out of state. (But he is recovering nicely after a dicey first day. Should be home this week)

Fark the VA. I'm a veteran and both experiences I've had with VA services have been... poor at best. My grandfather is a Korean War-era vet and luckily he invested well after his service and hasn't had to deal with the VA much. My dad hasn't had to deal with them at all. A few guys I served with have service-related disabilities and they uniformly tell me that dealing with the VA is a royal pain in the ass.

Arthen:You are aware that there are many more men than women in the military, right?

^this.subby seems to portray the percentage as shockingly high instead of low. The vast majority of active duty service members are male, leaving the remaining 47% of assaulted members to cover an even larger percentage of active duty service members who are just female! D:

Towermonkey:PainfulItching: It's the MREs I tell ya. They should go back to putting saltpeter in them.

That is a joke and this is horrific. And the VA has always been a farking travesesty. My dad's in one now. He needed cardiac bypass surgery, and the closest one that could do it is 6 hours away, out of state. (But he is recovering nicely after a dicey first day. Should be home this week)

Fark the VA. I'm a veteran and both experiences I've had with VA services have been... poor at best. My grandfather is a Korean War-era vet and luckily he invested well after his service and hasn't had to deal with the VA much. My dad hasn't had to deal with them at all. A few guys I served with have service-related disabilities and they uniformly tell me that dealing with the VA is a royal pain in the ass.

While he was working, he had his private insurance, which was faaaaaar superior. Now that he's retired, he has to drive 4 hours to see a VA doctor, unless it's an emergency. At least he is a retired health care worker, he's worked in operating rooms, ICU's, dealt withrespirators and such. He's not uninformed. Docs and nurses have been treating him fairly well, can't complain too much about the people we've seen face to face. Just too many hoops for everything, and the food is nauseating.

"Twenty-six thousand active duty service members reported they had been sexually assaulted or harassed in 2012"

I hate it when they combine two different numbers in an effort to make a story seem worse than it is. While they're both situations that need to be addressed, there's a huge difference between telling someone they have a nice ass (sexual harassment) and shoving something up their ass (sexual assault). I'd really be interested in seeing the individual numbers broken down on this.

abrahamclooney:Arthen: You are aware that there are many more men than women in the military, right?

^this.subby seems to portray the percentage as shockingly high instead of low. The vast majority of active duty service members are male, leaving the remaining 47% of assaulted members to cover an even larger percentage of active duty service members who are just female! D:

subby also failed to mention that the 26,000 cases were in ONE YEAR!

Not necessarily, it would depend on how the questions were worded. Knowing military surveys my guess is most likely along the lines of "have you ever been..." not "In the last year have you been..." but who knows.

When I was active duty, I could get on the classified network where they had all the incident reports. I noticed a lot of the sexual assaults on men tended to fall in 2 categories. 1) I went out drinking, got drunk, passed out at some guys house and I woke up with him doing something I didn't want him doing, or 2) I thought I met a woman down in the Gaslamp (San Diego) and it turned out to be a dude when we got naked.

Don't you have to pass psych screening to get into the military? Is there any kind of effective screening assessment for sexual predation? What sort of results with the current screening would cause someone not to be able to join?

Do you understand what constitutes sexual harassment in these surveys? "Have you ever been touched when it wasn't welcomed?" Sexual harassment. "Have you ever heard a sexual home that made you uncomfortable?" Sexual harassment. It's unreal what qualifies and it's no wonder there is such a pushback from letting military in the military period, let alone in combat units. What qualifies as boys being boys will literally cost you your career. There is no room for growing or maturing and there is even less room for honest mistakes.

Sexual assault may tendto be more about power and dominance and less about sexual gratification, however accuasation of sexual "assault" is often times driven by the benefits of accusations that need no proof to cause harm and gain benefit.

Not to mention that sexual harrassment has changed to mean just about anything including eavesdropping on a private conversation that included an off-color joke.

Side note: Female on male harassment/assault is pretty common and generally accepted.

Harassment is a tad bit different from assault. They really shouldn't lump those numbers together because the military has a really low bar for what they call harassment. Basically, *any* type of unwanted advance/gesture is considered harassment.